Criminal Justice Council asks Appropriations for language-access funds and curriculum completion money

Christopher Bridal, executive director of the Criminal Justice Council, told the House Appropriations Committee on Feb. 3 that the council’s FY2027 budget includes modest general-fund growth and several targeted requests to complete ongoing training and outreach work.

Bridal said the council’s general-fund request shows a relatively small increase (noted in committee material as about $71,443) and that the IDT fund is showing a larger increase (stated as $43,527,411). He asked the committee to consider two specific near-term items: a one-time $30,000 appropriation for language-access services and a budget adjustment of approximately $3,300,000 to complete the council’s curriculum update.

The language-access request is intended to fund translation of statewide policies and documents so non-English-speaking communities and people using American Sign Language can read or view key law-enforcement policies. “We translated our fair and impartial policing policy and our statement to communities to 13 languages in an ASL video,” Bridal said, adding the one-time $30,000 would extend that work to other mandated policies. Bridal said the Office of Racial Equity had helped secure vendors and pricing previously but that the council could not rely on that assistance as a recurring resource.

Bridal described the curriculum effort as a multi-topic rewrite: the council has updated more than 21 topics and over 220 hours of content and seeks the budget adjustment to finish the work. He told the committee the $3.3…